Look to the past for future of Mideast

Can we look at three notable dates in these seven days for lessons? On Tuesday, May 14, the Chicago Tribune published a full page of the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel to mark the 1948 founding. Part of that document reads,

“The State of Israel will be open for Jewish immigration and for the ingathering of the exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the Prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations … We appeal — in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months — to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the state on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.”

May 15 is known to Palestinians as the Nakba, marking the expulsion of thousands of Palestinian residents — a time of remembering and mourning.

For Western Christians, Sunday, May 19, this year was the celebration of Pentecost, with origins in the Jewish Feast of Harvest.

As the violence in Palestine/Israel continues, it seems paramount to look to the future. Can the decision makers look to the past and its lessons? Can a single state that would “ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitant irrespective or religion, race or sex,” perhaps based on the Kairos document, provide a just peace for the future?

Dan Jares

Bloomingdale